Welcome

I am a social anthropologist affiliated with KIFO - Institute for Church, Religion, and Worldview Research in Oslo, Norway. This site will feature posts related to my main areas of research such as secularism, Islam and Islamophobia, hate speech as well as religion and the public sphere. In 2017 my edited antology Anthropology of Our Times An Edited Anthology in Public Anthropology was published on Palgrave Macmillan US. The monograph 'Anders Breivik and The Rise of Islamophobia' (on Zed Books) is available through Zed Books. Additional books are are 'The Politics of Mediated Presence: Exploring The Voices of Young Muslims in The Contemporary Mediated Public Spheres in Norway', and 'Hva er rasisme?' (with Cora A. Døving) in Norwegian at Universitetsforlaget. I am currently taking part in a research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) entitled 'Governance of Islam in Europe' which will run from 2014 to 2018.

The Immanent Frame

The Immanent Frame publishes interdisciplinary perspectives on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. Founded in October 2007 in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council’s program on Religion and the Public Sphere, The Immanent Frame features invited contributions and original essays, and serves as a forum for ongoing exchanges among leading thinkers from the social sciences and humanities. Read my contributions to The Immanent Frame Here.

Edited anthology featuring leading contemporary anthropologists

This anthology represents the culmination of a series of public discussions with some of the leading international anthropologists of today —organized by the editor, Sindre Bangstad—at the House of Literature in Oslo, Norway. Thus, it provides fresh and original insights into the lives and work of these leading scholars. It features conversations with Didier Fassin, Angelique Haugerud, Ruben Andersson, Claudio Lomnitz, David Price, Magnus Marsden, Richard Ashby Wilson, and Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, in addition to an introduction by Sindre Bangstad and a preface by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

The Politics of Mediated Presence: Exploring The Voices of Muslims in Norway´s Mediated Spheres

This monograph is a contribution to the literature on freedom of expression, the public sphere and Muslim minorities in Europe. Based on five years of ethnographic research it investigates the experiences of young individuals of Muslim background active in Norway’s mediated public spheres.

Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia

My book on the right-wing terrorist attack on the 22nd of July 2011 in Norway is available through Zed Books. The book reveals how Breivik's beliefs were not simply the result of a deranged mind, but rather they are the result of the political mainstreaming of pernicious racist and Islamophobic discourses. These ideas, currently gaining common currency, threaten equal rights to dignity, citizenship and democratic participation for minorities throughout contemporary Europe.

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"Parrhesia is the courage of truth in the person who speaks and who, regardless of everything, takes the risk of telling the whole truth that he thinks, but it is also the interlocutor's courage in agreeing to accept the hurtful truth that he hears." - Michel Foucault.